SUPPEE. 



249 



food that was spread before him at breakfast, and that 

 he will have for his supper, and has had at all his meals 

 for a month past, so he should love it well. It consists 

 of tea, Indian corn bread, and fried pork. The pork is 

 cut in small slices, and fried until quite brown, and the 

 bread is sopped in the gravy. There is no attempt at 

 grace of service to make amends for the rude cookery, 

 no white cloth to hide the table, no dainty pat of butter 

 on a grape leaf, such as tempts the eyes as well as the 

 palate in the Tyrolean chalet ; but it is the plain simple 

 medicine to cure a hungry stomach, administered with- 

 out any sweetening. 



The refinement of a family is nowhere so quickly seen 

 as at a table, and nowhere do men's sensual selfish 

 instincts become more prominent. There is the centre 

 of the family after the day's wandering, there its first 

 meeting after a night of forgetfulness ; there we give 

 hospitality to the stranger, there the tongue is loosened, 

 the wandering thoughts called back, and the heart is 

 warmed into expression by generous wine. The feasts 

 of LuCuUus wQve celebrated for their Tvit, according to 

 the fashion of the day, and the simple suppers at the 

 Mermaid were the signals for the intellectual tournament 

 of England's greatest minds. " He has eaten with me," 

 is the Arab's talisman to protection, and the Christian 

 has made a supper the emblem of his religion. Then 

 what constitutes a supper, even the simple half of a 

 meal, being the food and its preparation, apart from its 

 physiological bearings, is worthy of thoughtful study. 



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